Friday, July 24, 2009

Friday TV Coverage From Indy

The action heats up as the cars and trucks begin practice and qualifying in Indy. The Sprint Cup Series is at the speedway, while the Nationwide and Camping World Trucks are at O'Reilly Raceway Park across town.

Live TV starts at 2PM with the NASCAR on ESPN originating their first Sprint Cup Series coverage of the season. This one hour practice will be covered by Jerry Punch, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree. Dave Burns, Vince Welch, Shannon Spake and Jamie Little are working the garage area.

SPEED takes over at 3PM with a thirty minute version of NASCAR Live. John Roberts hosts with Randy Pemberton and Hermie Sadler as his reporters. Steve Byrnes is up next at 3:30PM with the next Cup Series practice. Jeff Hammond and Larry McReynolds will join him with Wendy Venturini and Bob Dillner covering the garage area. Roberts will return with NASCAR Live to finish out the timeslot.

Rick Allen and Phil Parsons are up next at SPEED moves to ORP for Camping World Truck Series qualifying. The small track means starting up front is key, so this session should have lots of teams going all out for the front row. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander are the reporters.

At 6:30PM, NASCAR fans have a choice of two programs. SPEED offers Trackside while ESPN2 has NASCAR Now from Indy. Steve Byrnes has Larry McReynolds, Jeff Hammond and Elliot Sadler on Trackside. Guests are Joey Logano and Michael Waltrip. Allen Bestwick continues to anchor NASCAR Now with Marty Smith and Nicole Manske on-site at IMS.

This post will serve to host your comments about the Friday TV coverage from Indianapolis. TDP will be live blogging the Camping World Truck Series TV coverage on SPEED that begins at 7:30PM from ORP. To add your opinion just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting.

20 comments:

MikeC
said...

First, kudos to SPEED for filling in the gaps on the practice coverage this weekend.

Next, the best racing of the weekend will be taking place both tonight and tomorrow night at ORP. Virtually 100-minute sprints to the finish, that's usually nothing but side-by-side racing that makes for good television. These are 2 of my favorite races of the entire season.

Yeah, I saw that early this AM. I was going to e-mail Jay, and ask whether he, or BSPN had made the change. It may have been Jay. he does like to change things around at times.

I had noticed a few days ago that he was no longer posting his "posted a gaggle/load/bucket"/etc. sayings when he had added stories.

I did like his practice of posting when he had added 2nd or more updates to the Stories page. That alerted me to scan the page for the newer stuff.

I hope it was Jay that did this. I would hate to think that he had lost artistic control of his site. I remember in the past when he had allied himself with larger sites that he made it clear that he wasn't ceding control. I believe his stay at That's Racin.com was particularly contentious.

I also think I remember him saying when he announced the BSPN deal that he would not cede content, or editorial control.

Mayfield was also on a Clt radio station this morning (WBT 1110 AM) proclaiming his innocence. They offered him a drug test. Mayfield refused. There is a link to the audio if you want it JD, I'm not going to post it.

If JM goes to Indy, he should have to by a ticket, and sit in the stands. I would hope NASCAR will not let him the garage area. I don't remember where he was at the track where he talked to Marty Smith. It would be better if he was not allowed on the premises. He wants a pile of money from NASCAR, as his lawyers have told him he will get. I don't think he ever intended to go back racing, and if he did he would have been another S&P, if he could even qualify.

I don't think there are any winners here. Mayfield appears to have serious problems and needs help. He's hurting himself and his family much more than anyone else...which his behavior in the press is starting to show.

As for NASCAR...I believe in karma. Any effort/money they have put into this is payback for Tim Richmond.